Posts Tagged ‘Portsmouth’

Monday I overslept and didn’t get into work until 10.30am – on arrival, the boss (relieved to see me actually in) asked if I’d go down to Stansted to carry out some testing onsite for Ryanair. Realising this was an ideal way to spend the day, I went – and all was good. Got back about 4pm and was then asked if I minded driving down to Portsmouth the next day to pickup 2 cylinders – seeing another day out, I happily agreed.

So, off I went in our little Peugeot Expert van – it looks like this:

Nice drive down there – I made sure to take a couple of CDs to listen to 🙂

Loaded up the cylinders, and the rear axle looked like this:

Just ever so slightly overloaded I think…this picture was taken at Fleet services on the M3 (one of my favourite service stops – nice woodland setting, and there’s a Burger King 🙂 )

I made good time too – set off about 10am and was back before 4pm – averaging about 50mph which is good considering I had to go on the M25 (aka: world’s largest car park), plus the poor van was struggling uphill on the way back…

The last hour in the office was a bit manic – so many messages for me (it’s nice to feel wanted 😉 ) etc. so I was pretty much knackered by the time I left for home – and then it rained, and oh boy did it rain 😐 It rained so hard I thought I’d go see my mum rather than get soaked running from the car to my door, turned out this was a good move as I timed it perfectly for dinner 🙂

So, a bite to eat, chat with mum, then back home for a bath and then to watch the Champion’s League first game on TV (Spurs are in it don’t cha know?).

And the game? well, it started superbly – Spurs went 0-2 up in 18 minutes (this was away to Werder Bremen in Germany), I was so happy, I was already dreaming up non-PC blog entries (“Yids* FINALLY beat the nazis Germans” was one that had me sniggering inside). Then, 2 minutes from half time we conceded a soft goal and the game ended up 2-2 when Bremen came out fighting for the second half and sdcored after just 2 minutes (we missed 2 sitters late on in the match which would have given us a great boost in the group standings).

As it happened, the other group game also ended 2-2, so we are now joint top of the group on away goals 🙂

It’s the game on the 20th October I’m REALLY excited about though – Spurs travel to the San Siro in Milan to take on the champions Inter.

I’ve drifted off on the football there a bit…

Came into work today to find a bit of a puzzle regarding one of our customers – we service their jacks and recalibrate the load gauges on them as a contract. Now I’d got all the gauges calibrated, and had marked the serial number of the jack is was to be fitted to on the gauge itself, and the box itself – even the muppets in the workshop couldn’t get this wrong surely?

😐

No, it seems that the customer has 3 extra certificates (???), and several gauges are on the wrong jacks (imagine a 15 tonnes capacity jack with a load gauge going up to 75 tonnes…), giving me an almighty headache – I’ll most likely have to go down to Luton, spend an hour or so clearing security to check EVERY jack and gauge without looking like a total dick in front of the customer. Corina will confirm that I am absolutely fuming right now – Tim the tit has done it again, although how he can possibly slide the blame for this onto me is a mystery – everything was clearly marked in permanent ink.

Still, back down to Ryanair at Stansted tomorrow – they have a new person in charge of GSE and she’s still learning the ropes (as it were), the first few months I’ll be kinda coaching her to let her know what items are due for test/inspection (I’m half planning to turn the testing in Spain into a week holiday for me 😉 ) – deliver a couple of jacks, test some new equipment they’ve got in, grab a Burger King (heh – I LOVE Burger King, and the nearest one to town burnt down – yes, I’ve done all the ‘flame grilled’ jokes), and wander back to the office. The afternoon and Friday morning will be totally hectic though – boss is off to Singapore on Saturday for a week, Corina has next week booked as holiday, Tim is off for 2 weeks (it’s not all bad…), so I’ll be all on my own in the office but for Tuesday afternoon and a couple of hours Wednesday when Jenny comes in to do some accounts and pay the wages.

I’ve calmed down a bit now, time for a coffee and get some more work done. Have a good one y’all!

*Spurs (Tottenham Hotspur Football Club) are known as ‘Yids’ due to the predominantly Jewish population of north London (N17 – Tottenham). Apparently my t-shirt with ‘Yid Army’ on is now banned form the ground as it’s deemed to be racist – WTF? we (Spurs supporters) are quite happy to be referred to as Yids, and the greatest compliment a Spurs player can get is to be called Yid (i.e.: “Jermaine Defoe, yiddo”). Of course, arsenal (aka: the gooners), will always be referred to as ‘dirty gooner scum’ (supporters and players alike).